The General Election of June 2017, resulting in no overall majority, has created a major opportunity to promote our demands.The Tories are determined to make huge year on year cuts to NHS budgets and privatise services. The Labour manifesto pledged investment in the NHS and to:

reinstate responsibility of the Secretary of State for the NHS

ensure NHS patients get the world-class quality of care they deserve

tackle the growing problem of rationing of services and medicines

halt and review the NHS Sustainability & Transformation Plans ... and ask local people to redraw plans with a focus on patient need rather than availability

Now more than ever we need to press our demands on politicians from all parties.

The Tories want to destroy our NHS. NHS England is driving the NHS towards a US-style privatised and insurance-based system, leaving a defunded rump NHS for those who can't pay. The 44 new Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) across England are required to cut NHS spending by £22 billion by 2020 compared with 2015 spending levels.

The NE London STP is called the East London Health and Care Partnership (ELHCP). It covers Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, City of London, Waltham Forest, Barking, Havering and Redbridge. The population of this area is set to grow by 18% - numbers equivalent to the City of Leicester, yet health bosses are tasked with "saving" approximately £850 million from a local health service which is on it's knees. To add to this, the Royal London Hospital, built through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), has saddled NE London NHS with massive debts, while social care has suffered up to 25% cuts since 2010. The closure of King Georges A&E in Romford, with 200+ acute beds, is set to go ahead, putting further pressure on other services.

NHS England now requires STPs to develop Accountable Care Systems (ACSs) and move towards Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs). These are single organisations combining all the health (and, often, social care) services in an area. Whilst we all want to see better integration of services, the Health & Social Care Act (2012) remains in place, requiring services to be put out to tender. The size and configuration of ACOs will be particularly attractive to giant healthcare corporates that run similar health organisations in the USA, so we risk wholesale takeover of the NHS by multinational corporates.

Campaigners across England and locally in NE London aim to stop this. Join our campaign groups

Lobby your local councillors and MP.Demand that they oppose all cuts in services

Demand an end to the market in NHS services; reverse privatisation

No to the closure of King Georges A&E and closure of further beds at the hospital​

STPs - A Dagger Pointed At The Heart Of The NHSThe effects will be devastating, with the closure of beds, of key units including paediatric, maternity and cardiovascular and of whole A&E departments which are now bearing the brunt of the cuts elsewhere in the NHS. Entire hospitals will close in The Black Country and in Leicestershire, while many others including Cheshire and Merseyside will have ‘fewer beds’.Diane Abbott speaking in Westminster debate, 14 Sept 2016 (links to article & full speech in Huff Post)

North East London Sustainability & Transformation Plan (STP) (aka Slash, Trash & Privatise plan). The local NE London plan is one of 44 covering all England. It is secret, by order of NHS England. The NE London plan involves three parts:

The latest version of all STPs were submitted to NHS England by 21 October 2016. All STPs are designed to save money and will include major reductions in NHS services (or standstill in services in the face of huge population increases which, in practice, amount to huge cuts).

Don't privatise Homerton Hospital's pathology labContractors building a new pathology lab at the Homerton have gone bust, leaving the Homerton with massive debts. There are huge questions to be answered about the contract with the builders - but most urgently, managers are now considering proposals to privatise the pathology services. Homerton pathology provides an excellent responsive and high quality service. Privatisation is a huge concern. Don't let them destroy our excellent local service.Sign the petition at the link.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO OUR NHS?The government is tearing the NHS apart through funding cuts and privatisation, putting private profits ahead of patients. We urgently need new legislation to restore our NHS.

SPENDING ON NHSGovernment claims the NHS is 'unaffordable' and 'unsustainable'. Think-tanks funded by vested interests regularly make proposals for NHS payments - £10 for GP or A&E visits, £75 'hotel costs' for an overnight hospital stay and so on. Yet England spends far less on healthcare than France or Germany. And billions of NHS cash is wasted through costs of the NHS market, PFI schemes and private profit.

PRIVATISATION OF NHS SERVICESMore than £12bn worth of NHS contracts have been awarded to the private sector, siphoning NHS funds into private profits. The EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and CETA trade treaties will force all NHS services to be tendered. Sustainability & Transformation Plans will force a huge new wave of privatisation from 2017.

SUSTAINABILITY & TRANSFORMATION PLANS (STPs) - aka Slash Trash & Privatise plansNew STP plans will slash £millions from local budgets through cuts and closures and impose new models of care with fewer hospital beds, less doctors and professional staff, privatised services and risks to patient care and safety.

FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH NHSThese policies are wrecking the NHS. Government is on course to replace our healthcare system with US-style, hugely expensive, privatised and insurance-based healthcare. The NHS will remain, but only as a residual and greatly underfunded service of last resort, and caring for unprofitable cases. Our aim is to stop this!

We are the Hackney and City branch of the national campaign Keep Our NHS Public (KONP). We are campaigning for a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable National Health Service, both locally and nationally. We campaign against UK government measures to undermine the NHS by promoting marketisation, privatisation, and fragmentation and against cuts and reductions in NHS services. We aim to highlight and oppose the impact of these UK government policies on our local NHS services. More info.